A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Section VI: Of the Influence of the Imagination on the Passions explained
Hume explores how the imagination's vivacity influences the passions, arguing that lively ideas (beliefs) have a greater impact on our emotions than faint fictions.
What happens
Hume explores how the imagination's vivacity influences the passions, arguing that lively ideas (beliefs) have a greater impact on our emotions than faint fictions. He illustrates this with the example of Themistocles' secret plan, where the Athenians rejected an advantageous but unjust proposal because the advantage was only conceived generally, lacking the force of a particular idea. The chapter also discusses how recent pleasures, eloquence, and sympathy enhance the influence of ideas on the passions.
Themes in this chapter
Sympathy and Social Influence
Hume discusses how the opinion of another, especially when enforced with passion, can influence our ideas of good and evil through sympathy, which is the conversion of an idea into an impression by the imagination.
Custom and General Rules
The chapter highlights how general ideas (like 'advantage') have less influence on the imagination than particular ones, and how recent experiences and suitability to one's way of life shape the force of passions.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
Author and narrator, presenting his philosophical analysis of the imagination's influence on passions.
- Themistocles
Historical figure whose secret plan for Athenian advantage is used as an example to illustrate the influence of general vs. particular ideas on passions.
Key passages
“The image of the past pleasure being strong and violent, bestows these qualities on the idea of the future pleasure, which is connected with it by the relation of resemblance.”
A vivid memory of a past pleasure makes the idea of a similar future pleasure more lively and thus more emotionally compelling.
Hume explains how the association of ideas by resemblance, combined with the vivacity of memory, intensifies passions.
“But eloquence is not always necessary. The bare opinion of another, especially when enforced with passion, will cause an idea of good or evil to have an influence upon us, which would otherwise have been entirely neglected.”
Even without eloquent speech, the passionate opinion of another person can make an idea of good or evil affect us, when it otherwise would not.
This illustrates the principle of sympathy, where the force of imagination converts an idea into an impression.
“A general idea, though it be nothing but a particular one considered in a certain view, is commonly more obscure; and that because no particular idea, by which we represent a general one, is ever fixed or determinate, but may easily be changed for other particular ones, which will serve equally in the representation.”
General ideas are more obscure because they are not tied to a specific, fixed particular, making them less vivid and thus less influential on the imagination and passions.
This explains why the Athenians were less tempted by the general notion of advantage than they would have been by a specific, detailed plan.